Tag: Wimbledon

Cherries legend Mark Morris and the memorable Storer moment

mark morris bw bourne

STUART Storer is rightly remembered as the scorer of the vital winner against Doncaster Rovers in the last ever match at the Goldstone Ground.

Few remember exactly how the ball fell kindly to him that rain-lashed afternoon on 26 April 1997, but close scrutiny of the much-played clip before games at the Amex (also available on YouTube) shows it was from a rebound off the bar following a header by centre back Mark Morris.

Although defending was his priority, Morris had chipped in with a fair few goals over the years – including getting the winner for the Albion on his debut in a 3-2 win at Hartlepool on 2 November 1996.

Morris was a seasoned pro who had captained Bournemouth and Wimbledon and been part of a promotion-winning side at Sheffield United.

He had answered the call to join Brighton when his old Bournemouth teammate Jimmy Case was manager, as he told The Argus in a 2001 interview. The Seagulls were struggling at the foot of the bottom division with the trapdoor to oblivion gradually creaking open.

Maybe if the Morris header had gone in rather than rattling the bar, a different name would have been etched into the annals of Albion history.

Of the vital last-ditch game at Hereford, Morris told The Argus: “As a player, we were playing for the future of a club steeped in tradition. It was one of the biggest games in my career and the result was paramount.

“I was about 35 then. It was getting to be close to the end of my career and I wanted to end on a decent result. Hopefully I played some part in keeping the club up.” Continue reading “Cherries legend Mark Morris and the memorable Storer moment” →

Oatway took off with Bluebirds and soared with Seagulls

CHARLIE Oatway had not long earned his break in professional football with Cardiff City before he found himself behind bars in Pentonville Prison.

Up on a charge of GBH for his part in a fight, when an Afro-Caribbean friend was racially abused, Oatway didn’t expect to get incarcerated but ended up serving two months of a four-month sentence.

Before he headed off to court in London on a Monday morning, he had told Cardiff’s general manager, the former Leeds and Wales international Terry Yorath (broadcaster Gabby Logan’s dad), to expect him for training on the Tuesday morning!

The story is explained in detail in Tackling Life, the book Oatway published about how he turned his life round to become captain of Brighton and part of three promotion-winning sides.

The tale reveals how imprisonment was just one of the hurdles Oatway had to overcome in a life that’s taken many colourful twists and turns.

It was sadly ironic that his career as a player with Brighton was cut short in a Boxing Day clash against Queens Park Rangers, the team he followed home and away from an early age.

The family lived a stone’s throw from Loftus Road and Charlie – a nickname given to him by an aunt – was named by his Rs-daft dad after the whole of the promotion-winning 1973 QPR team: Anthony, Phillip, David, Terry, Frank, Donald, Stanley, Gerry, Gordon, Steven, James.

He was even starstruck at an Albion Legends event when he saw John Byrne who had been a hero of his during his days playing up front for the Rs alongside Gary Bannister.

Albion reaching the Division 2 play-off final in Cardiff in 2004 was the highlight of Oatway’s career – but a feature in the match programme was angled on the disappointment he had suffered the year before, when he had gone as a spectator with all his family to see QPR lose to Cardiff.

“Everything about the day was perfect apart from the result,” Oatway told reporter Alex Crook. “Being a QPR fan at heart, I felt the pain of the defeat just as much as the other 35,000 fans. But this time I am going up there as a player and not as a fan and I am determined our supporters will not go through what I did last season.”

The youngest of five kids, Oatway grew up in Shepherd’s Bush and even though he started to struggle in school from an early age, he displayed quite a talent for football.

“I knew by the time I was eight that I was as good as any of the eleven-year-olds I was playing with,” he recalls in Tackling Life. He had trials for the West London District schools team and played for Harrow Boys Club and Bedfont Eagles.

Oatway reveals how it was Wally Downes, the former Wimbledon player and later loyal assistant manager to Steve Coppell, who helped to get him noticed, along with his cousin, Terry Oatway.

The young Oatway joined up with Wimbledon in the year they won the FA Cup – 1988 – and played for the youth team, but he was let go at the end of the 1989-90 season because they thought he was too small. He went to Sheffield United on trial but was homesick so he returned to London and joined non-league Yeading on semi-professional terms. Off the field, life was by no means straightforward. “By the age of 19, I had two children with two different mothers,” he said.

After helping to get Yeading promoted in 1993-94, Oatway found a pathway back into the professional game when a community worker (Ritchie Jacobs) on the estate where he lived organised a trial at Cardiff City for him and two pals.

He was the only one of the three invited back and he said: “When Cardiff asked me back for another month, I knew it was the chance I’d been waiting for, and I was going to grab it with both hands.”

Not surprisingly, the two months he spent in Pentonville didn’t greatly help his cause but remarkably he was welcomed back to the club and accepted by the fans. However, in his absence there was a change in team management and ownership and, before long, new team manager Kenny Hibbitt was instructed to send Oatway out on loan to Coleraine in Northern Ireland.

On his return to Cardiff the following season, they had by then been relegated to the Fourth Division. Still he was unable to get back in the first team and he happened to play a reserve team game against Torquay United, who were managed by his old Cardiff boss, Eddie May. May asked if he fancied a move for first team football and, although he only joined just before Christmas in 1995, by the end of the season he had been voted Player of the Year.

When May moved on to become manager of Brentford, he put in a bid for the combative midfielder and took him back to west London to play in the Bees’ third tier side.

In 1998, Oatway had a brief loan spell with Lincoln City but on his return to Griffin Park he came under the managership of Micky Adams for the first time.

Adams had taken over the manager’s chair at Griffin Park but he was sacked when owner Ron Noades thought he could make a better job of running the team. Oatway was sent on a month’s loan to Lincoln, somewhat against his wishes, but on his return to the Bees he forced his way into the side and worked well with coach Ray Lewington.

Adams then took the reins at Brighton and, as the Albion began life back in Brighton & Hove after the two-year exile in Gillingham, Oatway and Bees teammate Paul Watson joined the Seagulls for a combined fee of £30,000.

Adams wanted the pair to join a nucleus of players who’d all played under him previously at Brentford and Fulham.

In an Albion matchday programme profile of Oatway to coincide with the visit of his former club, Torquay, on 2 September 2000, it noted: “Despite getting sent off rather stupidly in one of his earliest games for the Seagulls – he bit a Darlington player’s face – he soon became a great favourite with the Brighton crowd, who hadn’t seen a midfield scrapper like him since Jimmy Case retired.”

oatway prog cover

He went on to be a vital midfield cog in the back-to-back league title winning sides of 2001 and 2002. Although he was in the team that was relegated from the second tier in 2003, he was full of praise for the effort made to avoid the drop. “Steve Coppell was one of the best managers I’ve ever played under because of his attention to detail,” he said. “Steve’s team talks on the day before a game were brilliant.”

When the departed Coppell was replaced by Mark McGhee, Oatway remained a cornerstone of the Albion line-up and described that 2004 play-off final at the Millennium Stadium as “the best day of my career”.

But at one point it was touch and go whether he was going to be able to carry on. In October 2003, he underwent major back surgery to repair a slipped disc and trapped nerve.

He was out for nearly three months and he admitted in an Argus interview: “There was a good chance I wouldn’t play again.”

When the Albion cashed in on captain Danny Cullip in December 2004, selling him to Sheffield United, Oatway took over the skipper’s armband full-time, a role he had previously embraced as a stand-in.

The following season’s Boxing Day clash with QPR at Withdean was only two minutes old when Marcus Bean tackled Oatway from behind and escaped without even a booking.

Oatway was stretchered off and McGhee later told the mirror.co.uk: “Charlie has been a tremendous leader and captain and this is a huge blow. I’m very upset about it.”

Oatway had four different operations to try to fix the ankle injury, but he never recovered sufficiently to return to the required level to play league football.

“I tried to get back to playing again but by the pre-season of 2007 I had to call it a day,” he said.

However, even when he was out injured, Oatway was always a strong influence on the dressing room.

Stand-in skipper Dean Hammond said in an Argus interview in November 2006: “Charlie has been out injured but he has been fantastic for everyone. He comes in, he gets everyone up for it, he’s always laughing and joking. He’s got the enthusiasm and he is still determined, even though he is not playing.

“His personality is fantastic for everyone and I think he deserves a massive pat on the back.”

He also used the time productively, studying how the coaches worked with the youth team players and starting to take his coaching badges. When it was clear he wouldn’t be able to return to play full-time professional football again, he got involved with the Albion in the Community scheme as a community liaison manager.

Rather than give up the game completely, Oatway took the opportunity to become player-coach at Havant and Waterlooville and, in January 2008, he found himself in the national media spotlight when the Blue Square South minnows played away to Liverpool in the fifth round of the FA Cup.

Oatway wasn’t fit to start the game but he got on as a substitute in the 74th minute and later recounted how his former teammate Bobby Zamora fixed it for him to swap shirts with Liverpool’s Yossi Benayoun, who scored a hat-trick in the Reds’ 5-2 win that day.

Then, in 2009-10, Oatway began helping Brighton manager Russell Slade to coach the first team and, after Slade’s departure, continued in the role under Gus Poyet.

When Poyet left the Seagulls to join Sunderland, Oatway went with him and he was also in the dug-out alongside Poyet and his assistant Mauricio Taricco at Chinese Super League team Shanghai Greenland Shenhua, AEK Athens and Seville-based Real Betis.

Pictures: matchday programme; The Argus; Tackling Life (Quick Reads, 2011).

Fluctuating fortunes for Guy Butters after beginning alongside Spurs stars

Spurs’ programme remembers the early years of his career.
A programme cover shows Butts in action for Pompey v Oxford.

GUY BUTTERS saw plenty of highs and lows in a 20-year playing career that started with great promise at Tottenham Hotspur and included six years at Brighton, where he still works.

Butts coaches for Albion in the Community, he’s scouted players, hosted hospitality lounges and still turns out to play in charity matches, not to mention sharing a constant flow of corny jokes with his 3,700+ followers on Twitter!

Promotion via the play-offs at Cardiff in 2004 and being chosen as player of the season would be up there in terms of highs with Brighton.

My personal favourite came on 13 November 2004, when Butters scored the only goal of the game as Albion committed daylight robbery in front of 29,514 packed into West Ham’s Boleyn Ground.

BZ GBBrighton were up against it going into the game and had taken veteran Steve Claridge on for a month to help them out of a striker crisis. Hammers threw everything at the Albion that afternoon but somehow the Seagulls kept the ball out and, on 68 minutes, Butts, up for a Richard Carpenter free kick, got his head on the end of it to send the ball into the back of the net in front of the Seagull faithful.

Even after versatile Adam Virgo and Hammers’ Haydn Mullins were sent off for a scrap on 74 minutes, and West Ham bought on substitute Bobby Zamora, the scoreline remained 1-0 to the Albion.

A couple of months later, it was obviously a special day for Butters when, on 8 January 2005, he was given the captain’s armband to lead the Albion in their third round FA Cup tie against Spurs at White Hart Lane.

  • A programme portrait and skipper for the day in the FA Cup at White Hart Lane.

The matchday programme recalled how Butters “was very much the discovery of the 1988-89 season when manager Terry Venables lifted the tough tackling former Spurs trainee from our reserves to the first team to play alongside Gary Mabbutt and Chris Fairclough in a back three.

“Guy was also in there alongside such names as Paul Gascoigne, Chris Hughton, Chris Waddle, Paul Walsh, Terry Fenwick, Paul Stewart, (former Brighton Cup Final hero) Gary Stevens and Paul Allen. And he kept his regular place the following season when Gary Lineker was added to the squad.”

Born on 30 October 1969 in Hillingdon, he made his debut shortly after his 19th birthday in a League Cup game against Blackburn, and suffered the agony of scoring an own goal. But on his full league debut as a sub against Wimbledon on 12 November 1988, he made amends with a goal in the right end.

“We won that one 3-2 but it’s probably better remembered by Spurs fans as the game in which Gary Stevens was injured following a tackle by Vinnie Jones,” Butters told the Spurs programme.

“I’ve got great memories of my time at Tottenham but, looking back, I recall spending much of my time trying to avoid Gazza who was always up to something! But it was the players around me that I will never forget – I was in there with men who had appeared in World Cups, and that’s my abiding memory.”

The year after his Spurs debut, Butters also earned international honours. In June 1989, he was involved in three England under 21 tournament matches in Espoirs de Toulon matches.

He started in the 3-2 defeat to Bulgaria on 5 June, and was replaced by substitute Neil Ruddock. Two days later, he came on as a sub for Dean Yates in England’s 6-1 thrashing of Senegal in Sainte Mazime. Two days after that, he came on as a sub for Ruddock, as the under 21s drew 0-0 with the Republic of Ireland in Six-Fours-les-Plages.

Of that side, Carlton Palmer, David Batty and David Hirst went on to gain full England caps, but those three games were Butters’ only representative appearances.

After limited game time at Spurs in the 1989-90 season, Butters went out on loan to Fourth Division Southend United, scoring three times in 16 games.

Steve Sedgley, Fenwick and Gudni Bergsson were all ahead of him as potential partners for Mabbutt so, on 28 September 1990, he was transferred to Portsmouth for a fee of £375,000, having made a total of 35 league appearances for Tottenham.

At Pompey, he played at the back alongside Kit Symons and colleagues included Mark Chamberlain on the wing and Warren Aspinall up front, together with his ex-Spurs teammate Paul Walsh, now better known as a Sky Sports pundit.

But there were mixed fortunes for Butters at Pompey, which he spoke about in a November 2016 interview for the Portsmouth website. He was there six years and enjoyed some good times when Jim Smith was manager.

guy butters YouTube

He had a brief spell on loan with Oxford United in 1994 and he eventually realised his time at Fratton Park was up when a regime change saw the arrival of Terry Venables, who was the Spurs boss when he was sold to Portsmouth.

Tony Pulis signed him for Gillingham for £225,000 on 18 October 1996 and, in six years at Priestfield, one game in particular stands out for the unfortunate pivotal moment Butters played in it.

It was 30 May 1999, the Football League Second Division play-off final to determine the third and final team to gain promotion and Gillingham were up against Manchester City, remarkably, at that time, struggling to get out of the third tier of English football.

Goals from Carl Asaba and Bob Taylor on 81 and 87 minutes looked to have given Pulis’ side victory. But Kevin Horlock had pulled one back for Joe Royle’s City and, as normal time expired, former Albion loanee Paul Dickov equalised for City in the fifth minute of added on time to level the scores at 2-2.

With no further scoring in extra time, it went to penalties. City scored three of their first four; Gills had scored only one of their three. So, the pressure was on Butters, the fourth penalty taker, to bury it to keep the Gills in it.

When Butters stepped up and hit it low to ‘keeper Nicky Weaver’s left…. it was within the 20-year-old’s reach, and he pushed it away. Cue wild celebrations as City won the shoot-out 3-1.

“Missing that penalty was one of the worst moments of my life but you have to move on and I am not afraid to have another go,” Butters told interviewer Alex Crook in an article for the 2004 Division Two play-off final match programme. “At the time, I just wanted the ground to swallow me up but nobody blamed me because it was just one of those things.”

Consolation for Butters came the following year when Gillingham returned to Wembley and on that occasion won 3-2 in extra-time against Wigan Athletic. As with Pompey, Butters had six years in total with the Kent club and played 159 league games before being released in the summer of 2002.

IMG_6010The 2002-03 season was already under way by the time Butters joined Albion on a free transfer and, in the September, he was doing his own personal pre-season workout programme in a bid to get fit.

“When I first came here I had to do a lot of extra work with Dean White,” Butters told Brian Owen, of the Argus. “It was a case of trying to cram a lot of stuff into a little space of time. I wasn’t really getting too much time to recover after it.”

The managerial change from Martin Hinshelwood to Steve Coppell didn’t do Butters any favours either. Virgo and Butters were the centre back pairing for Coppell’s first match – a 4-2 home defeat to Bristol City – and both were then discarded into the wilderness.  Virgo went on loan to Exeter and, after Coppell brought in Dean Blackwell to play alongside Danny Cullip, Butters was sent out on loan to Barnet.

But when injury meant Blackwell’s career was over, the door opened again for Butters and he seized the opportunity to such an extent that as Albion won promotion back to the second tier via the play-offs, he was voted player of the season.

GB potseas by Bennett Dean• 2004 Player of the Season pictured by Bennett Dean.

In fact, it was the arrival of Mark McGhee to succeed Coppell that was very much a turning point in Butters’ career because he had previously been considering hanging up his boots.

In Match of My Life (www.knowthescorebooks.com), he said: “Mark was a real breath of fresh air as manager. Straight away he helped me with a special diet and fitness programme aimed at improving my general match fitness, but, more importantly, helping me work towards prolonging my professional football career.

“He was the first manager to do that and under his guidance I began to thrive and really enjoy my football again.”

As the Argus previewed the 2004-05 season with a special publication, they declared: “Buoyed by a great run of form in last season’s run-in and looking in good shape in training, Butters is ready for another stab at the second tier of English football.”

And Butters said: “This year I did a bit in the summer when I was on holiday and the gaffer put us through our paces so I’m sure that when the season starts I’ll be pretty match fit.

“It’s a big step up but, if we can get a few results away from home, not too many of those big teams are going to fancy coming to Withdean.”

  • The Argus spots a lighter refreshing moment!
  • Butters and Cullip were opponents when the Seagulls won at Sheffield United, another moment captured by the Argus.

Three years later, at the age of 37, Butters was still with the Seagulls and looking forward to what would ultimately turn out to be his last in the stripes.

“I thoroughly enjoyed it last year,” Butters told Andy Naylor. “It is probably one of the most enjoyable seasons I’ve had.

IMG_6014“I missed out on pre-season last year through injury. The gaffer was amazed I played as many games as I did.

“I cannot see why, with a decent pre-season under my belt and, as long as I look after myself, that I cannot do the same again.

“I just want to go on playing as long as I can and along the way enhance my CV with coaching badges.”

Manager Dean Wilkins finally released Butters at the end of the 2007-08 season, during which he had been sent off for the first time in his career.

He’d played a total of 187 games for the Seagulls and carried on playing with Havant & Waterlooville briefly plus a seven-game spell on loan at Lewes before trying his hand at management with Winchester City and Eastleigh.

Guy + Nick

  • I got the chance to meet Guy when he kindly presented an award at an event I was involved in organising: what a great bloke!

Cup Final hero Dave Beasant was Brighton’s oldest player

Beasant BHA

THE FIRST goalkeeper to save a penalty in an FA Cup Final – and the first to captain his team in the historic end of season finale – played between the sticks for Brighton at the ripe old age of 44.

Admittedly Dave Beasant is better known for his years playing for Wimbledon, during which time he laid down those FA Cup milestones in the 1988 final against Liverpool.

Nicknamed Lurch after the butler in The Addams family, Beasant’s heroics to keep out John Aldridge’s spot kick and preserve the 1-0 lead given to the humble south west London club by Lawrie Sanchez, led to the giant goalkeeper lifting the cup.

It also turned out to be the last ever game he played for Wimbledon. A month after that Wembley triumph, Newcastle paid £750,000 for his services – a transfer fee record for a goalkeeper at that time.

Not a bad return on Wimbledon’s £1,000 investment ten years earlier after he had impressed Dario Gradi playing for Edgware Town against the Dons in a pre-season friendly.

Beasant made his league debut against Blackpool in January 1979, and, remarkably, between August 1981 and the end of that 1987-88 season, made 304 consecutive league appearances for the Dons as they rose through the leagues.

When Newcastle sold Paul Gascoigne to Spurs for £2.2 million, they decided to splash £750,000 of it on the big Wimbledon goalkeeper.

Sadly, it was not money well spent. Beasant’s spell on Tyneside lasted just five months and certainly didn’t match the fairytale ending at Wimbledon.

Newcastle struggled at the foot of the table in 1988-89, and were relegated, but before the trapdoor opened Beasant had already departed after just 20 appearances.

He moved back to London in January 1989 to join Chelsea, where he played 193 times, initially under Ian Porterfield, until falling out of favour in 1992.

It was towards the end of 1989 that Beasant won two England caps, playing against Italy and Yugoslavia, and an injury to David Seaman saw Beasant selected for Bobby Robson’s 1990 England World Cup squad, although he didn’t play.

When Glenn Hoddle took over at Stamford Bridge, Beasant was relegated to number three ‘keeper behind Dmitri Kharine and Kevin Hitchcock, so he went out on loan for brief spells at Grimsby Town (six games) and Wolves (four games) before securing a £300,000 move to Southampton in 1993 to succeed Tim Flowers as their no.1.

He played 105 times for Saints but several managerial changes saw his fortunes fluctuate and, in 1997, he once again found himself third choice – this time behind Maik Taylor and Paul Jones – and he was on the move again.

By this time he was 38, but retirement was still not on his agenda. After joining on loan initially, Beasant moved permanently to Nottingham Forest in November 1997 and played 139 games in four years.

It was back to the south coast again in 2001, when Portsmouth needed a goalie following the death in a road accident of their regular ‘keeper, Aaron Flahavan. Beasant played 27 times for Pompey.

Emergency loan spells then followed successively at Tottenham, Bradford City and Wigan Athletic, although he didn’t play any first team games for any of them.

It was from Wigan, just a few weeks before his 44th birthday in 2003, that he once again headed south, this time to join Brighton’s brave but ultimately unsuccessful attempt under Steve Coppell to stave off relegation from Division One.

With Michel Kuipers out of the side with a thigh injury and loan replacement, Ben Roberts, suffering from ‘flu, Beasant was drafted in.

In the Bradford City v Brighton programme in February 2003, Colin Benson wrote almost poetically about the legendary goalkeeper.

Beasant landsc“The unmistakeable figure of Dave Beasant stood tall under the Brighton crossbar at the Bescot Stadium a fortnight ago marking his debut for his 11th club at 43 years of age by brilliantly saving from Leitao’s shot on the rebound after beating out an effort from Corica,” he wrote. “Unfortunately he could not crown the day with a match winning clean sheet for Walsall pinched a 1-0 victory but it amply demonstrated that after 20 years between the posts he has lost none of his technique or resilience.”

In a 2018 interview with Spencer Vignes, Beasant said: “Stevie Coppell gave me a bell. I think you’d lost 12 straight games. I remember looking at the table thinking ‘They’re going down’. But there was also something about it that I quite liked. It was a challenge.”

Beasant said that morale was good despite the league position, and he added: “Wherever I go, I can add something on the field and off it. And that’s what happened. We clicked really well together.”

He played 16 games through to the end of the season and although ultimately the bid to stay up was not successful, no blame could be laid at Beasant’s door for lack of effort.

Never was it more evident than in the final game of the season away to Grimsby. With the score 2-2 and all hope virtually extinct, Beasant was still giving his all when other players’ heads had dropped.

I chatted briefly to Beasant at the club’s end of season dinner and remarked how I had been impressed by his never-say-die attitude right to the very end of that game, even though it was a lost cause.

Obviously the consummate professional, he said to me that however unlikely a win would be, you had to continue to play in the hope things might change round.

What a pro and exactly the sort of attitude that meant Beasant endeared himself to the Albion faithful. In a prophetic assessment after the Grimsby game, he told the Argus:

“You feel for those fans because they have been superb. They are gearing themselves for next season already and hopefully the players can set the same target as the fans and, obviously, that is to bounce straight back.”

Beasant cemented his place in the record books as Albion’s oldest-ever player while Albion, of course, went on and did just as he thought they might on that glorious day at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

Although Coppell offered Beasant the chance to stay on with the Seagulls, he didn’t want to drop down to the third tier and instead took up Chris Coleman’s offer to become a player-coach at Fulham. He was proud to say that on his 45th birthday he was on the bench when Fulham played Chelsea.

Beasant remained on the Fulham coaching staff after Coleman’s departure under his old Wimbledon teammate Lawrie Sanchez (he had already worked with Sanchez in his previous role as Northern Ireland manager). But when Sanchez was fired, Beasant went too.

He subsequently worked for his son, Sam, at Stevenage, and at the age of 55 was famously registered as part of the squad for the 2015 play-off final, even though he didn’t play.

Between 2015 and 2018, Beasant was goalkeeping coach at Reading.